Paul Pringle

I received this book from BookishFirst.

The author, Paul Pringle, is an investigative journalist for the LA Times. He is handed a tip about a Dean of the medical school at USC being in a hotel room when a young woman overdoses but nothing was done about the matter. He starts investigating and this book details his investigating and results from that. He finds out more about the young woman who overdosed and talks to her parents who are horrified that USC and the local police department didn't do anything about this matter. The dean is an eye surgeon and it is recounted in the story that he brought drugs to the young woman while she was in rehab.

While this investigation is taking place, there are a couple of other scandals that occur around the same time at USC. One being a male gynecologist who preyed on young Asian female USC students. The other is the Varsity Blues scandal.

It was very interesting to read how the author was able to piece together everything and tell a cohesive story.… (mehr)

A journalist recounts his struggles to publish a story about a doctor who both used meth and used meth to control young women, and who was also a major figure at USC, against the pressure USC could bring against his paper. It’s understandable why the corruption of journalistic ethics basically made him an obsessive, but that doesn’t make the recounting any less overly detailed; about 20% of the book then covers other USC scandals at the time, including Varsity Blues. The picture that emerges is of a university too powerful for its own good, but there’s nothing from the inside because he never cracked any university employees.… (mehr)